Food versus supplements: a blurry line?

What counts as a supplement? Depending on the answer, I either take very few supplements, or very many.

I occasionally take Natural Calm, a magnesium supplement. I'm fairly certain that counts as a supplement, so that's at least one. My whey protein powder is a supplement as well, so that's two. But I'm not sure about the rest of what I take.

If I sprinkle some cayenne powder in my eggs, that's a food, right? Well, what if I take that same cayenne powder in capsules for the sake of convenience? Is it still a food, or does the act of putting it in a capsule transmute it into a supplement? How about other herbs or spices?

(I used to also take a garlic supplement as a tablet, but now I just eat a clove of garlic with a teaspoon of honey every few days.)

If I eat sauteed liver, that's definitely a food. But what if I take freeze-dried liver powder? Does the fact that it's powdered automatically make it a supplement? How about other freeze-dried organs and glands? They're part of my attempt to eat nose-to-tail, and they're all from whole foods ??? just processed a certain way to make them more convenient. (No different, really, from beef jerky in that respect.)

I also take a master tonic that I make out of apple cider vinegar, fresh hot peppers, fresh garlic, fresh horseradish, fresh onions, and fresh ginger. I take it to boost general immunity. Is that a food or a supplement?

How about coconut oil? Or cod liver oil? They're not whole foods since they're just from part of the original source ??? but you could say the same about a chicken breast (as opposed to the whole chicken). Is coconut oil a food or a supplement?

In addition to coconut oil and cod liver oil, here are the others I'm unsure about:

None of them are synthetic. None of them are especially isolated from their whole-food sources (although they are concentrated). But they're all different-in-kind, I think, from an apple or a rib eye. Are they foods or supplements?

2
Answers

Well if we are getting technical the word 'supplement' doesn't mean to take a pill containing industrially isolated nutrients. It simply means to add something in an attempt to impprove what you've all ready got. In that context, anything you ad in with the intent of improving your diet and nutrition is supplementation.

As well as the classic "supplements" of vitamin D3, magnesium, kelp tablets and acerola berry I also supplement with grass fed butter, coconut oil and and lots of vegetables and organ meats. If you look at it like that, supplementation is the bulk of what we do here :D.

Great question; I've been doing a lot of looking into superfoods and natural supplements lately and I've thought a lot of the same things. I used to be a whole food guy but then WAPF sold me on cod liver oil, and it's a slippery slope from there ;)

For me the issue isn't with the nomenclature, it's just about getting as much nutrition as possible while consuming as little junk as possible. I avoid synthetic vitamins & minerals and most supplements in pill or capsule form; instead I look for single-ingredient, minimally processed foods in powder form. Here are my three tiers of "supplements," from best to worst:

Definition: A natural ingredient taken for specific nutrients/health benefits that may undergo minimal processing (fermenting, drying, powdering). Oftentimes neolithic but generally has a long history of use; usually taken as a supplement and not considered a food.

III - Synthetic Supplements

See: Things in white plastic bottles

Definition: A pill or capsule produced in a laboratory that is usually composed of isolated synthesized nutrients and fillers. Very modern; invented only in the past century, and benefits of supplementation are not clearly proven.